Who took part in the December 24 rally in Moscow, and for what reason

The mass media continue to discuss massive rallies of people

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MOSCOW, December 27 (Itar-Tass) —— The mass media continue to discuss massive rallies of people, displeased with the policy pursued by the authorities and with dishonest elections, which took place in Moscow and other cities. According to public opinion polls, conducted by sociologists, most protesters are young successful people – representatives of the middle class.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes about a collective portrait of participants in the recent protest actions in Moscow, made by the Levada Center.

After polling the people, who came to the Sakharov Avenue, sociologists found out that 70 per cent of the protesters are Liberals by their convictions. They have a higher education, and 25 per cent of them are either owners or managers of some privately owned enterprises. 97 per cent of the polled are going to come to the next rally. Moreover, they intend to bring their relatives with them.

“Those people are the elite of society by their education level and the work they do. They determine the future of the country. It is very pleasant that 70 per cent of them are people of democratic, liberal views,” Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the organizing committee of the rallies, told the newspaper.

In 2011 street protest actions ceased to be the prerogative of professional opposition members, Kommersant writes. The authorities did not pay enough attention to the endless rally of people, displeased with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, held in the social networks. The first real case of injustice with vote counting took tens of thousands of people away from computers and brought them to the streets. It is those people who are changing the political reality in Russia.

The people who came to the Bolotny Square on December 10 included businessmen, consultants, auditors and managers, Kommersant continues. The rally was addressed by Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and Konstantin Krylov, a nationalist, one after another. Several months ago one could not even imagine them speaking from one and the same rostrum. The protsters -- the “office plankton”, as the opposition used to describe them with condescension, supplied it with creative slogans for months to come. When they found themselves at the rally, they behaved in a most polite way and bought coffee in plastic glasses for the embarrassed policemen.

Vladimir Putin’s questions-and-answers session and the address of President Dmitry Medvedev on December 22 were actually directed at those people. Putin, who described protesters in the Bolotny Square as “banderlogs” and said that the white ribbons they used as emblems resembled “means of contraception”, dispelled all doubts about whether or not to take part in the next rally. The Sakharov Avenue was thronged with people on December 24.